Ontario`s Rae Expresses Doubt On Quebec

February 17, 1991|The New York Times

TORONTO -- As premier of Ontario, Bob Rae is typical in many ways of the politicians across English-speaking regions of Canada who have worked in the past 25 years to accommodate Quebec`s demands for a less intrusive role for the country`s federal government.

But for Rae, as for many other politicians outside Quebec, recent weeks have presented the toughest test yet of their willingness to meet Quebec`s grievances.

Faced with an ambitious new set of constitutional demands from Quebec, ones that would give the French-speaking province a wide range of powers exercised by the federal government, Rae and other English-speaking politicians have struck notes of caution, and some of outright rejection.

Unless these reactions across English-speaking Canada are softened, many now say, the effort to keep Quebec within the 123-year-old Canadian confederation may founder.

Quebec`s premier, Robert Bourassa, has set a deadline of 21 months, until ``the end of the fall of 1992,`` for the rest of Canada to accept his latest proposals or face a Quebec referendum on a proposal that Quebec ``assume the status of a sovereign state.``

To this, Bourassa has added the suggestion that a sovereign Quebec would offer Canada a chance to have an ``economic union, managed by institutions of a confederal nature,`` but he has not said how this could work.

Rae has said he needs time to study Quebec`s proposals, which include a share for Quebec in setting foreign policy, exclusive control of matters such as energy, the environment and trade, and only skeletal powers for the Ottawa government.

But Rae has indicated a reluctance to go anywhere near as far as Quebec favors in reducing federal powers, as well as a strong opposition to Bourassa`s deadline.

``It`s really not helpful to approach these matters by drawing a line in the sand and saying, `Do what we say in two years, or else it`s all over,``` Rae said.

Rae`s position is the most accommodating of any English-speaking premier, with the exception of William Vander Zalm of British Columbia.

The British Columbia leader is a Dutch-born maverick who once said he would welcome Quebec`s independence if it would mean that he would no longer have to see French as well as English on his box of breakfast cereal.